Tools

Plenty of filmmakers have employed fairy-tale trappings to tell stories about emotionally stunted adults, but in this Colombian feature the approach feels warranted: had the story been presented any other way, it might have been unwatchably sad. Almodovar regular Carmen Maura plays a passive, childlike woman who's never left her isolated village; the "stubborn man" is her husband, a benign tyrant who's kept her from ever leaving. Maura's endearing, mainly silent performance recalls Giulietta Masina in Nights of Cabiria, and the colorful production design evokes Disney cartoons. Writer-director Andrés Burgos doesn't really transform these references into anything unique, but the movie is touching all the same. In Spanish with subtitles.
ByBen Sachs